San Francisco to Ban Public Nudity?

San Francisco to Ban Public Nudity?

City lawmakers are scheduled to vote Tuesday on an ordinance that would prohibit nudity in most public places, a blanket ban that represents an escalation of a two-year tiff between a devoted group of men who strut their stuff through the city’s famously gay Castro District and the supervisor who represents the area.

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That’s the unfortunately named Supervisor Scott Wiener, who last year pushed through an ordinance requiring nudists to spread a towel or other barrier on public benches before seating themselves. The persistence of a naked group of men who regularly congregate at Jane Warner Plaza has compelled Wiener to act again. “I don’t think having some guys taking their clothes off and hanging out seven days a week at Castro and Market Street is really what San Francisco is about,” he said.

To Gypsy Taub, protest organizer and hostess of a local show called “My Naked Truth TV,” the proposed ban is proof that officials want to turn the city back into “the Dark Ages of body shame and fear.” To Taub’s 9-year-old son, Bunny Gonzalez, who was fully clothed during the protest, nudity “is a good cause. Scott Wiener is trying to make nudity bad.” Placard-waving Web designer Mitch Hightower said the San Francisco clampdown smacked of gentrification: “More and more they’re taking away the things that are only-in-San Francisco.”

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In case you were wondering what the subject of Gypsy Taub’s television show is:

Taub, a mother of two, said she got her start as a nudist while hosting a local cable program devoted to the theory that the government was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“I thought if I take my clothes off, I bet they are going to listen,” she said.

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